Chinese EFL Learners' Consciousness Of The Stylistic Values Of Grammatical Metaphor As Reflected In Their Exposition Writing

Grammatical metaphor, a prevailing feature in all the adult languages, has been under scrutiny in the past five decades ever since Halliday first raised the concept in the 1960's. From then on, it has intrigued great interest concerning: (1) its relation with the traditional lexical metaphor, (2) the relativity of metaphoricity along the continuum from the pole of grammatical metaphor to that of congruent realization, (3) the very existence of textual metaphor. Engaged as systemic functional linguists are in their exploration of grammatical metaphor, these linguists seldom extend grammatical metaphor to stylistics. On the other hand, stylistics has rarely covered grammatical metaphor yet, particularly in the study of the appropriateness of Chinese EFL learners'style reflected in their exposition writing.Given the gap between the study of grammatical metaphor and that of Chinese EFL learners'stylistic consciousness, the present thesis is conceived. It presents a complete framework of grammatical metaphor and then makes a systemic analysis of the stylistic values of grammatical metaphor in terms of three semantic meta-functions. Following the confirmation of the theoretical framework, the thesis probes into the Chinese EFL learners'status quo of their consciousness of the stylistic value of grammatical metaphors in their exposition writing by making a contrastive study between three groups of writers: one group of native English writers and two groups of Chinese EFL learners: the English major sophomores (learners at the advanced level) and the non-English major freshmen (learners at the intermediate level).Statistical analysis reveals that Chinese EFL learners are not fully aware of the stylistic value of grammatical metaphor and that the awareness is related to their levels of language proficiency, which is indicated in the different distribution patterns of grammatical metaphor between their writings and those of native writers. The most outstanding difference between native writers and Chinese EFL learners lies in their respective competence in utilizing nominalizations and logical metaphors. For interpersonal metaphor, Chinese EFL learners, particularly intermediate Chinese EFL learners, are in the habitual reliance on the metaphoric realization which undermines the objectivity and soundness of expositions. As for the textual metaphor, Chinese EFL learners demonstrate some techniques which are equivalent to those of native writers.Concerning the Chinese EFL learners'immaturity in handling grammatical metaphor, the thesis proposes two reasons: first, the difference between English and Chinese; second, the inadequacy of instruction in the writing classroom. Finally, it brings up some feasible suggestions for the instruction in writing to promote Chinese EFL learners'consciousness of the stylistic value of grammatical metaphor.